Recently, digital TV sets and high-quality liquid crystal display TV sets are rapidly developed and play an important role of home media centers involving audio/video devices. The TV sets can receive and process digital, analog, cable, wireless, or satellite TV signals. In addition, they are capable of communicating with various electronic apparatuses to serve as displays with expanded functions.
Please refer to FIG. 1, a block diagram illustrating a common home entertainment center. The home entertainment center 100 includes, not exclusively, a game device 101, an audio amplifier or a speaker 102, a network device 103, a signal receiving device 104, a display device 105, an audio input device 106 (e.g. microphone), a video camera 107, an audio/video reproducing device 108 (CD, DVD player or recorder), a microprocessor unit 109, a remote controller 110. These devices are in communication with each other via a data bus 111.
A typical example of a home entertainment center of FIG. 1 is illustrated in FIG. 2. The home entertainment center includes game consoles 21, computers 22, set-top boxes (STB) 23, TV sets 24, high fidelity (Hi-Fi) audio devices 25, and CD/DVD players and recorders 26. Various audio/video signals, including satellite signals, cable signals, radio signals or signals from Internet, may be received by the computers 22 and the set-top boxes 23 for further process and shown on TV sets 24. Certainly, the signals from the mentioned devices may be transmitted outwards through the computers 22 and the set-top boxes 23.
The TV sets or other audio/video devices may be operated from a short distance by a remote controller. By pressing keys or buttons on the remote controller, respective functions are performed. Because the rapid increase of functions of the audio/video devices, the remote controller with limited size may not have enough buttons to make each function to correspond to one dedicated button. In general, a remote controller has a power on/off button, an array of numeric buttons, direction buttons, a selection button, a menu button and so on. To solve the problem about insufficient buttons, the buttons may be cooperated with an electronic menu or an on-screen display (OSD) to show options on TV set to expand the selectable operations. However, since the home entertainment center involves more and more entertainment facilities, it is unavoidable that the design of the remote controller grows more complicated. Even though the electronic menu or on-screen display is used, it becomes more and more difficult and inconvenient to operate the complicated remote controller.
With the advance of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) and semiconductor technology, a motion sensitive remote controller is developed. A motion-sensing component is built in the motion sensitive remote controller to sense the movement, position, or motion status of the remote controller. The motion-sensing component may be implemented by an electronic compass, an accelerometer, a gyroscope or a combination of them so it can at least senses the relative position or motion status of the remote controller in the 3D space. When the user holds the remote controller and performs specific actions, the audio/video device may be operated as if the user presses a volume up/down button, a channel up/down button or a direction button of the conventional remote controller. In addition, a selective item of an electronic menu shown on the screen of the audio/video device can be highlighted or selected according to a pitch motion, a yaw motion or a rolling motion of the remote controller.
A drawback of the motion sensitive remote controller is that the possible actions for the remote controller are limited. Only up/down or left/right buttons may be easily substituted by up/down or left/right movements of the motion sensitive remote controller. In other words, still many functions of the audio/video devices should be operated by pressing the corresponding buttons on the remote controller. Although some specific actions for the remote controller are designed by different manufacturers to enhance the controllability of the remote controller, the actions are too complicated and unfamiliar for the user to memorize. Hence, the remote controller is not easy-to-use at all.
Therefore, there is a need of providing a remote controller to obviate the drawbacks encountered from the prior art.